Three Signs That Your Organization May Be Too Insular (Lessons from Penn State)

While much of the nation is horrified by the recent scandals at Penn State University, they are not surprising in certain ways. Many of the characteristics that the university exhibited in the years leading up to these disclosures are not unique. We have seen them in other embarrassed  institutions, such as the Catholic Church, the military in the U.S. and around the world, many large urban police departments, and others. Do you recognize yourself, your company or your organization in the following practices? If not, you may be so far out of touch with reality that you are setting yourself up for a fall from grace similar to Penn State’s.

MISTAKING YOUR EXCELLENCE IN ONE SUBJECT AREA AS OMNIPOTENCE. Robert A. Mundell, who won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Economics, appeared on Late Night with David Letterman one night to read “Top Ten Ways My Life Has Changed Since Winning The Nobel Prize.” The first change (number 10) he cited was that he “can end almost any argument by asking, ‘And did you ever win a Nobel Prize?’” It’s funny, but also true. Once you are applauded as a subject expert, it is easy to think all your opinions and actions are beyond reproach. But
really, does being rich automatically make you an expert in all things economic? (Similar to Mundell, I have heard titans of industry give this retort to challenging questions:
“If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”) Similarly, Penn State’s success on the gridiron may have led the school’s officials to believe that either they were not accountable for their actions or that they could do no wrong.

A company that is highly successful making widgets may still have a poor accounting system, leaving their very existence in jeopardy. Similarly, making that one widget well does not mean that the manufacturer is guaranteed success in other areas. Witness the companies that ventured outside their core competencies and failed notably. There is a reason
that the King James Bible states that “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Just because you’re good, stay humble and put a check on yourself.

YOU ARE ORGANIZED TO SHIELD YOUR LEADERS FROM UNPLEASANT TRUTHS. Evidence of this shortcoming can be found in the way that Penn State’s top officials did not know of the true nature of the violations against children on the campus. (By the time that word-of-mouth about an assault in the locker room meandered to the president’s office through “Whisper Down the Lane,” it had devolved from a “rape” to “horseplay.”) Do your top leaders understand how, for example, poor expense reporting may affect the bottom line? If not, it
might be good to open up at least a bit.

YOU HAVE NO OUTSIDE INFLUENCES OR OVERSIGHT. It appears that Penn State officials, including school president Graham Spanier, did not venture outside the university when they
uncovered wrongdoing. Rather than go to the police, they tried investigated the perpetrator themselves. And as we have been saying since Watergate, the cover-up was worse than
the crime. How do you govern? Do you or your organization ever ask for outside opinions, or have you become your own frame of reference? Going further, is your company hiring
from outside its inner circle? There are reasons we have Affirmative Action in this country, and one is to promote diversity of thought rather than  monolithic mindsets.

Mark Wilson and Mark Doorley of Villanova University’s ethics program write in an editorial, “As we try to understand what happened and what failed to happen at Penn State, we must ask broader questions about all our institutions. Do they cultivate a capacity to act on behalf of others, no matter what their role or status? Or do they reward inaction and loyalty to procedure, and so unwittingly lay the groundwork for complacency and complicity with evil?” Indeed, such introspective questions will help keep us and our organizations honest, in more ways than one.

Magic Johnson: The 20th Anniversary of Positive Thinking

Magic Johnson,
Still Vital Today

One generation knew exactly where they were when they learned of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. My peers know where we were when we learned of the death of President Kennedy. Likewise, I know exactly where I was on November 7, 1991. I was head of public relations and communications at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and one of my employees came into my office and said, "There will be a press conference in an hour. Magic Johnson has AIDS."

Of course, that was part of the misunderstanding at the time. Johnson did not have AIDS. Rather, he would announce that he was HIV-positive. But the feeling was the same, that this was the announcement of a death sentence.

Or was it? When the press conference took place, Johnson was... well he was Magic. He was as calm, composed and charismatic as ever. He announced he would be retiring from the game, and that he "would be a happy man." To the rest of us, it sounded like whistling past the graveyard. We all knew better. We knew the time would come when the HIV virus would overtake him and lay waste to that magnificent body and dominating spirit.

Except it didn't.

On this 20th anniversary of that announcement, Magic Johnson is still with us. He returned to basketball for a brief time, and now the ex-basketball star is a highly successful businessperson, having built coffee shops, movie houses and housing developments. He is also an analyst for the game that transformed him and which he helped transform in turn.  Mostly, he is the living embodiment of defiant success over adversity. He is a symbol of living with HIV, the first of many who have gone on to do so. (The magazine Entertainment Weekly used to have an annual feature in which they paid tribute to the performers lost to AIDS in the previous year. Amazingly and gratefully, that has long been discontinued.)

Yes, his money gave Magic Johnson extraordinary access to more medication and treatment than others would normally have. But Johnson has other extraordinary capabilities that mere money cannot bestow: a spirit and can-do attitude that made him believe the unbelievable. That he could beat the scourge of his era and make us believe that others could beat it, too. So on this anniversary, let's think beyond Magic Johnson and consider those seemingly impossible things we can accomplish if we believe we can, just as Magic declared that he "would be a happy man."

Bernie Madoff Reminds Us of the Need for Open Communication and Ethics

There is a revival of interest in Bernie Madoff now that the eminent TV program 60 Minutes profiled his family (Oct. 30, 2011). It is a reminder to us all about the value of reputation. I give a speech on branding. I ask my audience if they could imagine the image that their own name would conjure. I then list the following names and show their pictures:

• Mohandas Gandhi
• Mother Theresa
• Martin Luther King
• Hitler!

The flinch at that last name is palpable, especially after the admiration and good will expressed for the others. (Stop and think: When was the last time you heard a reputable family name their son “Adolph?")
Peter Drucker noted that "ethics stays in the prefaces of the average business books." Consider the long line of lies told by a famous oil company when it had a massive spill off the Louisiana coast. The company listed lists otters, sea lions, seals, and walruses as "sensitive biological species" that deserve protection in the Gulf of Mexico. However, there are no otters, sea lions, seals, or walruses in the Gulf of Mexico. They listed emergency phone numbers for mammal specialist offices in Florida and Louisiana that were no longer in service. And their spokespeople proudly stated in their disaster plans that, "under the worst-case spill scenario," it could skim, vacuum, or otherwise remove as many as 20 million gallons of oil a day. In fact, they captured only about 630,000 gallons a day.
Even the best companies often obfuscate in their annual reports. Some may say that "We performed well in a difficult economy," rather than say, "We didn't make our numbers this again again."  Or they may state that "We have a healthy backlog," rather that "Our manufacturing inefficiencies keep us from meeting our delivery goals."
Conducting business in a socially responsible way is, in the end, a sound business practice in and of itself. It allows you to attract the best employees. It helps create an atmosphere in which quality products are produced because your people will proudly stand behind them. Trust helps maintain good relations with people and institutions such as your employees, your shareholders, the media and the local community. Your word becomes your bond, as good as a contract. But most important, it is the best branding possible. After all, if you can't be trusted to keep your story straight, why should your customer trust your products or services? So I encourage all business people to build their trust in the following ways, as I have helped my clients in my role as a professional communicator:

• Inform your employees of the state of your business regularly through face-to-face meetings and publications.
• Issue press releases and meet with members of the local media so that they learn to trust your word.
• Address members of your community and build relationships with your elected representatives.

"I would rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it," said Will Rogers. The name "Madoff" is now a synonym for "swindler," and all financial planners now operate under a cloud of suspicion.  Indeed, the hell through which Bernie Madoff put his family, his employees, his customers, and even his colleagues is an argument for both ethics and transparency.

When Your Job is to Get a Job

A friend recently noted how he was not focused on his job hunt, which I could understand, as I have been out of work myself at times. But when I asked how he spent his day, he described mowing the lawn, picking up the kids and things like this. Here are the points I shared with him:

• Your job every day is to get a job, when you are out of work. Treat that goal with the same urgency you would  paid employment. You normally wouldn't leave the office to mow the law, defrost meat for dinner, watch TV, etc.
• Get into a routine as you would every day if you were paid full time by someone else. Start at 8. Or 9. End at 5.
• Get up every morning, shower and dress for your "job" (which is <repeat after me> to get a job). This will help you feel refreshed and more energized about the task at hand.
• Put in your eight hours or more at your "job." Sure, you can take a break, stretch your legs, get a cup of coffee, but stick to it.
• Network as often as possible. Set up meetings with people who can help you find what you are looking for. This is part of the "job."
• When you have finished your work for the day, stop. Unwind. Get dinner ready. Watch some news. Wait, the news is depressing, especially when they get around to reporting the unemployment rate. So watch Comedy Central or The Three Stooges instead.
• Review your day with someone else, such as a significant other or a friend. This will help reinforce that you actually accomplished something that day. And if upon review, it turns out you weren't all that productive? Well, reread the first bullet above, and implement tomorrow. It will be another day.

Awards Mean Little to Those We Serve

The president of the nation of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize, but she isstruggling to be re-elected.

The Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees were long the odds-on favorites to face each other in the  2011 World Series, having won the most games in National and American leagues, respectively. But most teams are home after losing in the first rounds of their playoffs.

In 2010, the movie The King's Speech was number one at the Academy Awards... and 18th at the box office.

Do you see a pattern here? Despite what we often say when we promote ourselves in conversations, press releases and the like, there is often little connection between our laurels and our sales (except for people who receive awards for sales, but that's apparent).

I know I have a little section of my resume carved out for my awards. That's because I was advised to do so to generate interest. And truth be told (and please don't spread this around; it's just between us), there are many other communicators to whom I look up who have not won any awards. In the end, it is our output that matters.

Consider these little tidbits: John Wayne was one of the biggest moneymakers in film history (and is still one of the most popular film stars in the world today, decades after his death!), and he did not win an Academy Award until near the end of his career. Ernie Banks, Mr. Cubs, is one of the most revered baseball players in the history of the game, yet he never won a World Series or even appeared in one. And Graham Greene, Mark Twain, Evelyn Waugh, Marcel Proust, Simone de Beauvoir, Bertolt Brecht, James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Franz Kafka and Henrik Ibsen are listed among the greatest writers of the 20th century, yet they are also distinguished by never having won the Nobel Prize in literature.

In the end, these folks were distinguished by what they accomplished, not by the citations they accepted, and by what they overcame, not that they were overlooked. Periodically, we should also take comfort in our own personal inventories. A highly successful sales rep once put it to me this way: "I want rewards, not awards." Customers, clients and our other stakeholders ultimately feel the same way.

Too Much Information for Hurricane Irene? I Don't Think So

Many Monday Morning Quarterbacks have weighed in and decided that the media gave too much attention to Hurricane Irene, even accusing them of hyping it.

Nonsense. That could not be more incorrect.

In this case, the news media did what all professional communicators are supposed to do: Give their stakeholders the information they needed to cope with a given situation. Certainly, much of the nation was gun-shy after Hurricane Katrina, when many people ignored the warnings and suffered for it. 

Some people complained that the media hyped the flu pandemic of 2010. The feedback afterward was that it was "no big deal." But it was no big deal precisely because of the information that year. People washed their hands, got their shots, made sure their kids got their shots, and followed all the recommended procedures. Good job!

Now take a look at your own communication responsibilities. Do employees in your organizations get sufficient information when it is time to sign up for annual benefits? Is your community fully aware of new traffic patterns when road work is going on? Are your shareholders fully aware of how pending legislation or regulatory decisions, such as from the FDA, will affect your products, and therefore your stock price? Short of panicking an audience, I am not a believer in "too much communication." And I can assure you that many people who were safe after Hurricane Irene hit them believe they got the information they needed.

I Tweet, Therefore I Am (Notes on Re-entry)

I have just returned from two weeks in Italy, and it is remarkable to see what two weeks away do to your public image. Because I did not have access to a computer, I had no blogs. No Tweets. No press-worthy events. It was as though I dropped off the earth, as measured by my Google Alerts.

However, I did use my BlackBerry to post milestones of my Italian journey on Facebook, and what a difference. Friends and family enjoyed hearing about the meals, the sights and the meetings with family. They were engaged, as measured by their "likes" and their comments.

This brings me back to a concept espoused by the great Seth Godin in his blog post, "The Truth About Shipping." Among other things, he stresses the importance of delivering something every day. "Ship often," he urges. "Ship lousy stuff, but ship. Ship constantly."

So I am back in the saddle, writing, Tweeting, blogging, prospecting, communicating. While I enjoyed the trip immensely, it was also a timely reminder about the value of output.

I hope to hear from YOU, too!

Giving our best, in the words of Joe DiMaggio

All I ever learned about maintaining a reputation for being the best came from the mouth of Yankee great Joe DiMaggio. When asked why he always hustled so hard, he responded, "There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first or last time. I owe him my best."
Now compare this attitude to those of business owners, who risk their own reputations, as well as those of their companies and employees, to unethical practices. Or entertainers who don't perform at their best and create an everlasting impression -- fairly or not -- on the ticket-buyer who showed up for that day's performance. Our brands, our names and our reputations are sometimes all we have. Do you tend your image every day as you should? Will the people who encounter you today remember a superlative effort or a lackluster try?
I know this may seem harsh, and believe me, I have both benefited and suffered from this, but it is a reality to which we must all attend.

Marshall McLuhan at 100: The Media Are Still the Messages (and more)

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of famed academician, philosopher and media observer Marshall McLuhan. In reflecting on his life, it is stunning to see how his influence and his relevance have only grown in this era of "The Social Network." Consider that McLuhan coined now-common phrases such as "the medium is the message, "information overload" and "hot and cool media" decades before we would understand their full significance.

His watershed book, Understanding Media, was written 20 years before the PC revolution and 30 years before the rise of the Internet. Yet his insights predicted how we would engage with the world through the wide variety of media available to us. In 1964, Understanding Media seemed to be the rantings of a crazy man. But in the light of the 21st century digital world, he makes perfect sense. One can argue that Understanding Media is the most important book ever written on communication. (I would accept that premise.)

Like many other future-oriented thinkers, such as H.G. Wells and Louis Mumford, Marshall McLuhan accurately predicted many events. For example, he believed that printed books would become obsolete, killed off by television and by other electronic information technology (e-books, anyone?). In War and Peace in the Global Village, he predicted that a coming, vast electronic network (read: the Internet) would recreate "the world in the image of a global village" (another McLuhan phrase that has entered our lexicon). And quite a village it is: When Time magazine proclaimed Mark Zuckerberg the 2010 Man of of the Year, they noted that Facebook users around the world comprised "a social entity almost twice as large as the U.S. If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest, behind only China and India."

Though he is somewhat forgotten today, McLuhan's popularity grew throughout the 1960s and 70s. His work was translated into more than 20 languages, he appeared in magazines across the world. Embraced by the counter-culture and acknowledged somewhat by the mainstream, McLuhan had an hour-long TV special on NBC in 1967, a Playboy interview in 1969, and an appearance on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, a cutting-edge TV show of the late 60s. However, McLuhan may be best remembered for his ironic cameo in Woody Allen's 1977 Oscar winner, Annie Hall, where Allen makes McLuhan appear magically just to settle an argument with a pedant in a movie queue.

McLuhan never claimed to be a crusader, and in fact, he never was. He was an observer and a documentarian. His various epigrams are testimony to this, and they have gained increased significance in today's media-encrusted world:

• "A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding." (Think of all the media talking heads who provide much heat but little light.)
• "All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values." (One example is that people who watch more news on TV than average believe that crime rates are higher than they actually are.)
• "Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either." (Sesame Street, anyone?)
• "Art is anything you can get away with." (McLuhan foreshadowed Warhol and Basquiat with that one.)
• "Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favor of his image, because the image will be much more powerful than he could ever be." (Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I submit as Exhibit A, Ronald Reagan. As Exhibit B -- Barack Obama.)
• "The car has become the carapace, the protective and aggressive shell, of urban and suburban man." (From fast food consumed in cars to the docks for our various electronic gear, he nailed this one.)
• "There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew." (This statement was made before "Ecoimagination" became an advertising buzz phrase.)
• "We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us." (Is there any doubt that our perceptions have been influenced first by television and later -- today -- by Facebook? Our whole notion of what constitutes a "friend" is entirely different.)

McLuhan continued to influence even after his demise. In 1988, eight years after his death, his son published McLuhan’s Four Laws of Media. These questions resulted in the formulation of the following four laws of media, and how they affect us. Using cell phones as an example, here is how McLuhan's Laws manifest themselves:

1. Extension/Enhancement: Every technology extends or amplifies some organ or faculty of the user. What does the medium enhance or intensify? (In this case, the voice is enhanced.)
2. Closure/Obsolescence: Because there is equilibrium in sensibility, when one area of experience is heightened or intensified, another is diminished or numbed. What is pushed aside or obsolesced by the new medium? (Answer: the telephone booth.)
3. Reversal: Every form, pushed to the limit of its potential, reverses its characteristics. (In this case, the cell phone does not free us. Instead, it puts us on a leash because we are always accessible.)
4. Retrieval: The content of any medium is an older medium. (Childhood yelling has become the content of cell phones, as we raise our voices to be heard.)

McLuhan found significance in the most mundane matters. For example, he could see how typography, with its specific variations of form and aesthetics, became forms of expression in themselves. Even print was not a monolithic medium to him.

So in this media-oriented world, where jeans have special pockets for iPods and the backpacks of most self-respecting kids are loaded with electronic gear, it is good to consider the visionary insights of Marshall McLuhan. His star grows ever so brightly, perhaps even directly proportional with the glow of display panels and their increasing influences on our lives and psyches.

Note: While I admire McLuhan greatly, I also direct you to this more critical article by Paul Seaman titled, "Marshall McLuhan: A Media Guru Reconsidered." While I don't agree with much of what Mr. Seaman has written, I appreciate his even-handed approach to McLuhan's legacy.

The Father of Future Thinking

If we want to develop a future-oriented mindset. we can learn from the great science fiction and fantasy writer, H. G. Wells (1866 – 1946). His keen observations of scientific phenomena, combined with logic and math, allowed him to predict a number of trends and developments over the course of the 20th century.

Considered to have an overall accuracy of as much as 80 percent, Wells's predictions covered a wide range of subjects, such as urban living, transportation, government, defense methods, education and sociology. His accuracy rate was estimated to be as high as 80 percent, and he attributed his own success to the following methodologies:
• INDUCTIVE REASONING — Wells taught that inductive reasoning — the process of making inferences by observed repetitive patterns — was key to making reasonably

accurate predictions.
• FUTURE-FOCUSED THINKING — Wells did not live in the past. Instead, he thought constantly of things to come, and he believed that change could not be ignored.He also thought of the present in terms of how it could drive the future. This was an extension to the notion that the conditions of the past would drive the future.
• GROUNDING IN SCIENCE — Wells kept himself knowledgeable of scientific principles and developments, as he believed that science was predictive by nature. For example, he flew in the face of the thinking of his time by predicting that aircraft would be heavier than air, rather than lighter than air, as with balloons and dirigibles. His reasoning was that if a craft were to conquer the air, it would need to be stronger than air.
• KNOWLEDGE OF THE PAST — Wells believed that all future events were preordained by past events, so it was important to know the past in order to know the future.
• LAW OF LARGE NUMBERS — Wells used statistical probability to make predictions. He believed that while small, incremental human events may influence outcomes in some way, broad trends can tell the story more accurately, smoothing out the effects of anomalous events. Another way of saying this is that Wells looked at the big picture.

Wells used the following process to make his predictions:
1. Assume that prediction is possible.
2. Use a combination of facts, logic and math.
3. Gather data.
4. Identify the drivers in science and technology that could change the future.
5. Identify central tendencies using the science of statistics (i.e., find the most common occurrences).
6. Identify the areas that will affected by change.
7. Pursue causal changes.

How accurate was Wells? In 1901, his book on the coming twentieth century, Anticipations, predicted what the world would be like in the year 2000. He wrote that trains and cars would move workers between the cities and the suburbs, that women would seek and achieve greater sexual freedom, that there would be two world wars in which German militarism would be defeated, and that a European Union would be formed.

In an era when we feel buffeted by change, we can still reasonably predict the future by studying trends and making informed inferences. As I often tell my audiences, we don't need to pay a fortune tell to know the future, we only need to pay attention.